Cheese, chocolate and philosophy....

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Now this morning was different. It was overcast and seemed perhaps that it would rain. Normally, I go to the Sommieres market on Saturday morning but I was on a mission. I needed some chocolate olives and I couldn’t go home without them. I’ve never found these fake olives anywhere but the south of France, in those wonderful tourist trap places like Les Baux or Carcasonne where they have a candy store that would be a very pleasant place to die if one had the choosing of such a thing. Not sure the staff would appreciate it but grabbing my chest and keeling over into the praline truffles, while knocking over a barrel of these chocolate olives and watching them dance across the floor might be just the kind of high adventure finish I think I have in me.

But Les Baux and Carcasonne were hours away and the shutters were pressuring me to finish them. Christian had googled chocolate olives for me on a hunch. We found a store in nearby Montpellier that carried them (actually they made there own). Easy enough then; a quick drive to Montpellier, visit the store, get the Nestle’s chocolate for the chocolate fondant (I didn’t tell you that yet eh!) we would have Saturday night and presto I’d have the olives as well.

Ok then, straight into the underground parking at the Comedie (Montpellier’s opera), a short walk to the street where the store was. Yes number 25 ….there’s 19, 21, 23…. Fermé. Closed for the “Congés”….what’s a “Congés”? Well there is another chocolate store up the street….Tramp, tramp, tramp…Closed for the “Congés”. Two more chocolate stores…all closed for the “Congés”. Turns out “Congés” is vacation, a midwinter school break that the French like to take to get away. But why all four of Montpellier’s chocolate stores would take the same vacation made me think the universe was conspiring to deprive me of my chocolate olives.

I picked up the other chocolate and a few nice fruits to dip into it and made my way home. I was able to paint a few more sides of the shutters before I cleaned up and with my new chocolate fondue set all primed with chocolate and tidbits of fruit I made my way over to Christian and Corinne’s.

Their friends were already there, a couple who owned a set of “gites” that they had been working on. Nicolas, whom I had met before when he showed me through the construction project on his new “gites”, is an affable and easygoing Frenchman with a calm manner and a lively sense of humour. His English was Ok, as was his wife’s (but I forget her name right now), and together we passed an hour over aperitifs and pretzels.

Corinne had served a cheese fondue before but we’d never done a cheese fondue followed by a chocolate fondue. Tonight would be a milestone night. As usual the cheese fondue was served with a mound of French country bread already cubed and ready for dipping. The cheese itself was a mixture of several cheeses that smelled as rich and fattening as it tasted. Spearing a big chunk of bread and dipping it into that molten cheese was not just tasty but a lot of fun as well. Not to be totally decadent, Corinne also served a green salad with a light but tangy home made dressing of olive oil (from their own trees), orange and spices….I might be wrong about the orange but it did taste really citrusy.

And then came the chocolate fondue (after much wine). I had included, apples, pears, bananas, strawberries, mandarin oranges, kiwi and lichee fruit. We started with 200 grams of chocolate but quickly added another 100 grams just so we wouldn’t run out in the middle.

It was delicious! Christian and Corinne made me a gift of both a cheese fondue pot and the chocolate fondue pot. So now they are both at the farm where we can all use them as much as we like.

We tried some new wines as well and several of the old stand bys. What was really wonderful about the evening was the comfort of just sitting around with a bunch of French people, the language gently rolling over me like warm river water. I felt immersed in this culture, a world away from my own and yet at home and comfortable. By this time, after eight days, my French comprehension had improved and both of their guests worked easily to help me with their constrained English. We could have been sitting in Saratoga, or Toronto, or Vancouver but we were in the south of France, just a stone’s throw from a medieval castle that is our play ground. I could pinch myself but there’s no need. This is good living. These are good people and sharing nights like this with the other people we will surely meet along the way is a pretty good way to spend a life.

Captain Vancouver found his adventure in the new world. We can find ours in the old. All we need be is brave and daring and ready and of course we also need to be ourselves.